General availability: Always Encrypted for Azure SQL Database

Published date: July 07, 2016

Always Encrypted aims at enabling you to confidently store sensitive information, such as credit card numbers or government identification numbers, in Azure SQL Database. Always Encrypted helps ensure that sensitive data is encrypted and decrypted inside client applications or application servers by using keys that are never revealed to Azure SQL Database. As a result, even database administrators, other high-privilege users, or attackers gaining illegal access to Azure SQL Database can't access the data.